Vouchers

[Oniya]

Okay, so I was having a conversation with my paramedic sister today, and the subject of vouchers came up.  Specifically, the replacement of Medicare/Medicaid with vouchers (like I said, she's a paramedic), but I can see it expanded to school vouchers and other situations.  I'd like to hear what people's opinions are on vouchers - If they're good, how/why are they good?  If they're bad, how/why are they bad?

[Callie Del Noire]

To me? It's a way of opting out of supporting the entire school system and selectively benefit JUST yourself and your child. We're trying to forget that the common good is served by building a system that benefits everyone.. instead we're turtling in. It allows for people to 'disinvest' in the future.

My opinion anyway.

[OldSchoolGamer]

Vouchers are corporate handouts.  I'm not saying everyone who supports vouchers is a corporatist tool--far from it.  Public schools need reform, but that can keeps getting kicked down the alley.  So I think the government and teachers' unions need to take co-responsibility for the voucher drive.  But at the end of the day, vouchers are just a way to funnel money from the government into the hands of corporations.

And vouchers for Medicare?  That's a non-starter.  The insurance model doesn't work for senior health care.  The insurance model is that you pay a small, fixed amount each month in exchange for being protected against rare disasters.  Like homeowner's insurance.  Homeowner's insurance wouldn't be viable if your home got burglarized, burned down, flooded and the roof blown off every year.  The insurance model is viable because disasters of this magnitude hit the average home maybe once every couple decades, if that often. 

Under a single-payer plan, people would pay into the system starting when they were young and healthy, being net contributors.  Then, decades later, they would be old, and draw the benefits they had accumulated over their younger lives.  Dropping old, sick people into the insurance pool for the first time doesn't work.

[Callie Del Noire]

Under a single-payer plan, people would pay into the system starting when they were young and healthy, being net contributors.  Then, decades later, they would be old, and draw the benefits they had accumulated over their younger lives.  Dropping old, sick people into the insurance pool for the first time doesn't work.

True.. but you got in what.. 3 sentences what the GOP and 'reform minded' Liberals have spent the last 10 years refuting.

Vouchers aren't going to work.. but fuck.. they will try to push them till they get it.

[Pumpkin Seeds]

Gamer is right about the insurance for the elderly versus for the young.  This is one of the unforeseen bonuses coming from a public healthcare insurance plan.  Young people, who typically do not buy insurance for themselves, will have to buy insurance.  Since young people rarely get sick or have major medical complications they will be funneling a great deal more money into a system that does not return the money to them in the form of medical payments.  Whereas the elderly contribute very little due to less ability to work long hours, frequent medical reasons to not work and problems getting work later in life.  The elderly though require larger payouts from insurance companies as their medical problems mount.  A voucher program giving them a set amount of money to join an insurance program will quickly run out as their medical payouts increase.  The insurance company will raise their premiums if not remove them from the program altogether.  Senior citizens are typically on a fixed income so anything beyond the voucher would severely cut into their already small budgets. 

School vouchers is something that my state has wrestled with for some time.  Privatizing public education really took off after Hurricane Katrina hit and many of the inner city school districts were destroyed.  Charter school programs, which are schools run by private companies with public funding, went on the rise along with the notion of voucher programs.  New Orleans has one of the most advanced and prominent parochial school systems in the country next to one of the worst public education systems.  So there has been a push for quite some time for children to attend these vastly superior schools as opposed to the horrible public schools. 

Vouchers do have the wonderful effect of sending promising young children to superior schools.  Parochial and private schools do have better test results, better outcomes for children and provide better environments for learning.  So simply taking a child from a worse school to a better school does seem an almost instant fix.  The problem, so far as I see, is nothing actually changes.  Private and parochial schools gain more money, but not significantly so as they probably had little trouble attracting students from middle and upper class families with money to invest.  Most such schools also have wealthy alumni associations to contribute as well.  Public schools lose a great deal of money as each student takes a bit of their money from their already starving coffers.  The public school then has less money to fix problems and the students still there will have a worse education.

[OldSchoolGamer]

Vouchers do have the wonderful effect of sending promising young children to superior schools.  Parochial and private schools do have better test results, better outcomes for children and provide better environments for learning.  So simply taking a child from a worse school to a better school does seem an almost instant fix.  The problem, so far as I see, is nothing actually changes.  Private and parochial schools gain more money, but not significantly so as they probably had little trouble attracting students from middle and upper class families with money to invest.  Most such schools also have wealthy alumni associations to contribute as well.  Public schools lose a great deal of money as each student takes a bit of their money from their already starving coffers.  The public school then has less money to fix problems and the students still there will have a worse education.

Good points.  If I were king, I would strike a "Grand Bargain," as follows:

1. Vouchers are off the table
2. We allocate more funds to public schools
3. All options for reform of public schools--merit pay, changing the school year, taking approaches that are proven to work and applying them elsewhere, changing the dog-and-pony show of teacher credentialing in which an education major can teach science but a NASA engineer cannot--are on the table and up for consideration.  No more sacred cows.

[Beguile's Mistress]

I don't know how medical vouchers will work without some strict guidance and we've all seen how Medicare/Medicaid have benefited from oversight.

School vouchers on the other hand represent money paid directly to school districts in the form of wage and income taxes and a sales tax in some districts.  A parent who wishes to send their child to a private school for any reason should not be discriminated against when they are a tax payer.  I pay taxes to support public schools.  I don't have children.  I physically can't have children and I am not a candidate for adoption.  There will be no children of my own in my life but I will be paying taxes so the children of other people can go to school and get whatever education the public school systems wants to give them, good or bad, and so that these schools can pay for all the extras.  I also pay several hundred dollars a month for health insurance and some of the tax money I pay goes to providing health insurance for teachers and staff and administrative personnel.  When I have to listen to a teacher whine and cry about being told to pay twenty-five dollars a month toward the cost of his health care while he's putting sixty-five dollars worth of gas in a $40,000.00 SUV I think, yeah, give people school vouchers, take away your students and look at how much money the tax payers will save when you get furloughed.

School vouchers I'm in favor of 100%.  It's MY money and I should have a right to say how it is spent.

[Will]

Wouldn't it still be other people getting a say in how your money is spent, not you?  If you're not sending anyone to school, you're still not the one making the decision.  It just happens to be parents, not the government.  It's the consumer making the choice, and I can see why a lot people would prefer that idea, even if I personally don't.

School vouchers seem to me like you're dooming a vast majority of underperforming schools to a slow faster death, while the few best schools prosper even more.  That would be fine and wonderful if all the kids in the country could go to those few best schools, but that's not possible.  I think it's more likely that a vast majority of kids would be stuck in the ones hemorrhaging funds while vouchers walk out the door.

There are problems with the education system, obviously, but I would rather try and see them fixed than just throw our collective hands up and say "Screw it, here's some money, go where you want."  That amounts to giving up on the majority of school-going kids.  Not everybody can afford to drive their children to a more distant school, after all, and you can only expect someone to walk so far.  So you aren't solving any problems.  It's a cop-out.

[Beguile's Mistress]

I don't know how under-educating children by forcing a public school system on them when better choices are available is a benefit to anyone.  When the public schools become the only game in town what incentive is there to perform and graduate exceptional students.  That is, those that don't make it to the NFL/NBA/MLB/NHL but go on to become leaders in other fields.  It's usually only personal perseverance by students and parents that get the child and the school system to move forward.  Within the public school systems there are various levels for educating the "regular" students and the high-achievers as well as those challenged in some way.  Without vouchers parents who want better for their children are punished for that by having to pay taxes for the public schools and tuition to the private schools. 

Frankly, I wouldn't send a child to a public high school in this city and would thing really hard about the other grades as well.  Even if the quality of education matched between public and private the private schools provide a better learning environment.  I work with job seekers and those who are hiring.  In this region private school students are seen as the cream of the crop and actually present a better face when applying and interviewing.  80% of private school graduates meet the highest standards while only 25% of public school graduates do according to the demographic studies within my company.

The system is failing the students and they have been for decades before vouchers were even thought of. 

I think vouchers for education would encourage the public school systems to compete for students by raising their standards, the quality of their education and regulating union influence in decision making processes involving curriculum and the retention of teachers who do not perform.  Our children are our most important resource for the future and the quality of their education should come ahead of supporting a broken system that has the United States falling behind other countries in the world in regards to the quality of education.

*goes looking for the stats*  Here is one that I found.  I don't have time to look for more right now but will later.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/dec/07/world-education-rankings-maths-science-reading

[Callie Del Noire]

What about the schools that are already getting marginalized Will? I went to one particularly craptastic school for most of a year because of where we lived. It was under represented by the school board and the folks that ran the county were siphoning off funds to their side of the country (the RIGHT side of the tracks).

Vouchers will only increase the divide between the Haves and Have-Nots.  You'll have class rooms with electronic boards on one school with 20 to 30 students in classes and another using 20 year old books with 40+ kids to a teacher and crapping heat/ac.

[Will]

My issue is that giving parents the option of sending kids to private schools doesn't actually do anything to fix the public ones.  It's assuming a lot to think that the competition will make public schools raise their standards.  I think it's more likely that you'd just see a lot of layoffs and general despair within the system, and larger classes for the teachers that remain.  I'm not sure how that equates to things getting better; you're expecting them to do more with less.

I'm not saying I want to "support a broken system."  I think major, DRASTIC changes need to be made to the whole thing.  But I don't see vouchers as really helping anyone, other than a thin slice of upper-middle class America who are right on the edge of being able to afford private education, but can't.  Everyone beneath that just gets handed an even more abysmal education.

[Callie Del Noire]

My issue is that giving parents the option of sending kids to private schools doesn't actually do anything to fix the public ones.  It's assuming a lot to think that the competition will make public schools raise their standards.  I think it's more likely that you'd just see a lot of layoffs and general despair within the system, and larger classes for the teachers that remain.  I'm not sure how that equates to things getting better; you're expecting them to do more with less.

I'm not saying I want to "support a broken system."  I think major, DRASTIC changes need to be made to the whole thing.  But I don't see vouchers as really helping anyone, other than a thin slice of upper-middle class America who are right on the edge of being able to afford private education, but can't.  Everyone beneath that just gets handed an even more abysmal education.

I agree.. but the Tea-Party has gone 'cut crazy' and now 'Vouchers' are the cure all for everything. I don't see how we can repair the damage that will do.

[Oniya]

What about the schools that are already getting marginalized Will? I went to one particularly craptastic school for most of a year because of where we lived. It was under represented by the school board and the folks that ran the county were siphoning off funds to their side of the country (the RIGHT side of the tracks).

Vouchers will only increase the divide between the Haves and Have-Nots.  You'll have class rooms with electronic boards on one school with 20 to 30 students in classes and another using 20 year old books with 40+ kids to a teacher and crapping heat/ac.

The little Oni is in what's called a 'Title I' school.  Public school, gets money from the state because so many of the students are 'at risk'.  In the orientation meeting, they spent most of the time telling us about all the outreach programs they have for 'at-risk' kids.  When we asked about kids that were brighter than average, the response was 'Oh yes, we have an Honors program'.

The Honors Science class doesn't have books.  They are using an online 'science text' that is password-accessed (no home use), and they have that password because one of the other schools in the county lets them crib it.  If the power goes out to that computer, the teacher has to string extension cords so that she can actually power up the lesson.  They have no materials.  There aren't any labs, other than what the teacher can scrape together with stuff on hand.  The Math book she uses is one that the teacher has told us is pretty much crap (one teacher does math and science).  The Honors English/Social Studies class (again, one teacher) also is in need of books.  She was thrilled when Mr. Oniya and I specifically asked what the Honors program needs when they do the funds dispersal.

[Beguile's Mistress]

One thing to keep in mind is that many of the children going to private schools and parochial (church or parish) schools and being home schooled are no better off financially than the average public school student and their parents have been paying double to get the best for their kids because the public schools in their districts are below the standards of the private schools. 

The American Way seems to be working your ass off to do the best for your kids and then having to listen to others calling them elitist and unpatriotic.  I know parents who are raising 3-4 children on the barest of budgets and sending their kids to private school for a GOOD education while both parents work and I know parents who send their kids to public school for free, complain about all the fees for extras that they think the taxpayers should cover and drink and smoke and party rather than work and drive expensive cars and wear expensive clothes.  Someone has a very big sense of entitlement in that scenario and it isn't the parents of the private school kids.

[Will]

But we aren't talking about punishing or rewarding lazy parents here, are we?  We're talking about the kids, and what's best for them.

[Pumpkin Seeds]

Public school systems are already being encouraged to provide better school models and higher performance.  The problem is nobody has an understanding of how to improve the performance or even what measurement tools to utilize to determine if the improvements actually work.  In addition the funding of public schools has not be altered as they still rely heavily on property tax, which for poor inner city areas means less funding while having more children.  Suburban areas have higher property values along with a lower population meaning those schools are well funded while also having less children to disperse the money across.  Vouchers remove more money from an already poor school district to help only a few.

Private schools already turn away many applicants.  These applicants come from promising schools and prominent families filled with people that have money.   Obviously these schools are not under any inclination to expand or take on more students if they are already turning away people.  Meaning that only a few students from this voucher program will get into these schools despite passing the entrance requirements.  Even well deserving children will be left in a school system that already has a hard time sustaining itself and has now lost even more funding.  Currently the city of New Orleans does a lottery system and holds out hope that the schools will open up more seats. 

Beguile is correct that private schools have higher standards, but this is due more because they can have those standards.  A private school drawing on students whose families make middle to upper class incomes has little problem requiring things like uniforms, new textbooks, lab equipment privately purchased and stable access to a computer with internet.  These are expectations and requirements for classes at these schools.  Students unable to have these things will be a severe disadvantage.  Certainly the school may be kind enough to provide some of this equipment, but this is relying on a kindness that will shorten up the more disadvantaged children attend the school.  An example of this can be drawn from my own background as a senior at a parochial school.  Typically each year my books cost upward of five or six hundred dollars, while senior year the cost was almost a thousand due to needing special equipment for an advanced math course I elected to take.  Vouchers will not cover this extra cost and if the parents of public school children could afford to give the school five to six hundred extra dollars a year each, the school would be a lot better.

Please see this article as foundation for the previous assertion of private school students coming from families with access to more resources.  http://www.edweek.org/ew/issues/private-schooling/ 

Keep in mind that public schools receive funding in part based on test scores.  Children that leave for private schools must be able to pass an admission test that is quite difficult in some cases.  This means that the children which are better off academically are now leaving the classroom of these public schools.  This means not only a loss from that voucher money taken out of the education budget, but also a loss of that academic student from the testing scores.  This can add up to quite a loss for the public school districts.  Saying this would make them compete and improve is like telling an athlete to run faster and then breaking their foot thinking this will make them better

[Callie Del Noire]

Yeah, exactly. We're talking about building a future..and without a strong foundation in critical thinking, science and math we're not going to be a competitive nation in 'white collar' issues and well.. they've phased out blue collar options a LOT.

When I was in the navy just before I got out there was a LOT of complaining in some communities within the fleet. Technical skills require a certain foundation in Math and Sciences that is shrinking within the states. I was seeing more and more college students coming into the system and fewer high school students.. they just don't have the foundation to qualify for rate training in the field me and my buddies were training junior sailors in. (He was a nuke and I'm an Avionics Tech..)

[Serephino]

I know the system is broken.  However, I don't think vouchers are the answer.  As Pumpkin pointed out, it's only going to cover a set amount for tuition.  There are other costs.  That, and how do you know it will cover the whole tuition?  Maybe you'll get a $600 voucher because that's the average in your state, but in your county, the cheapest private school is $1200 a year.  That isn't going to help much.  It's the same thing people were concerned about with medical vouchers instead of Medicare.  The vouchers will be for what the GOP thinks is a fair amount, but that doesn't mean it will cover what private insurance companies want to charge.

I would rather see that voucher money go toward improving public schools.  It doesn't have to be as bad as it is.  I went to a school that wasn't too bad.  The teachers cared, at least most of them anyway.  I remember at least twice that the school was rewarded extra money for good test scores.  The first time it was spent on new books and building repairs.  The second time it was spent on new computers.  Every time the school got the money things got better.

[Callie Del Noire]

I look on it as this.. It's a way to disinvest yourself from the public at large. It all comes down to 'mine vs yours' and the rich folks use things like vouchers and tax breaks to not be involved with the 'Hoi Poloi' (sp?). It is very easy to withdraw from the problem and not work on it.. it takes more time and effort to fix the system than divorce yourself from it.

That is my problem with the majority of the Tea-Party approaches to things.. It's not 'fxing the problem' it's 'Taking care of mine and @#$@ the rest of you'. We let them set things up.. we rebuild barriers and divides not fix the problems.

[Beguile's Mistress]

I think one of the basic differences between private and public schools is the attitude of entitlement public schools foster.  Private schools require parent participation and therefor more parents and children are connected through and throughout the education process.  Public schools don't "require" anything and very few parents participate.  Of all the public school families I know on a small percentage work for the schools volunteer programs and those are usually in sports.  I call a friend of mine who is a stay at home mom to ask about the volunteering she does for the private school her three children attend.  She averages 20 hours a week as head of the PTG and chair person of one committee, parent partner in the classroom and driver for field trips.  I called another friend who teaches in a middle income area public school and she nearly fell off her chair laughing when I asked how many volunteer hours the school requires.  The answer:  None.  How many volunteer hours are given by the parents of the 30 students in her home room?  None.  The number of hours donated by parents to help with class activities?  None.  They can't even get parents to sign up to chaperon field trips.  When something is handed to you free of charge most people don't have respect for it.

It's not at private school families have more resources to give it's that they give of the resources they have.  They put the children before their own convenience and do what is needed to get their children educated. 

My grandparents paid over $12,000 to send me to a private boarding school to whicch I received a 30% academic scholarship allowance.  The reason were because my home situation was untenable and dangerous and the public schools in my home district and their school district were abominable.  I was lucky.

Not all parents are like the ones I've described, though.  There are good parents who partner with the public schools their children attend and who are working to get conditions improved in those schools but they also spend many hours each week working with their children to keep their grades up, provide outside sources for learning and pay for tutoring so their children do well in standardized testing all things the public schools should provide and don't. 

If you have children and you send them to a public school and don't do anything else with their schooling you are rolling the dice and taking a chance on getting a good education for your child in this school district.  Open enrollment isn't guaraneed and neither is admittance to a charter school.  Magnet school programs are lottery driven.  Rather than provide good education for everyone the public school system spends a lot on a few and little on the many.

The kid in our neighborhood who disturbed the peace all summer practicing drums got over $1,500 worth of drums free and hours upon hours of lessons and supervised practice at tax payer expense.  That would have paid for vouchers for several kids to use toward tuition for private school.  I'd rather help educate a doctor, lawyer, or scientist than a drummer.

Vouchers and privatizing the public schools would do more to improve our educational system than anything else.

[Callie Del Noire]

You're right.. Bequile's Mistress, there is a SERIOUS disconnect in the way schools operate.. courtesy of 30 years or more of school systems.  Making the parent's invest time into things and an active role in the school. The healthiest school system I have seen was the one my brother sent his son and daughter to.. They went to private school till high school.. then went to public school for that.. the school system in their town is awesome because the School Board, PTA and other things working to help the school going while the economy turned to shit in the area (Thank you NAFTA.. killed carolina textile industry real good)

The tea party fringe in that county got stepped on hard .. so the school board and others continue to work together rather than one group running over the others.. the family participation is waht really helps out.

[Will]

I think one of the basic differences between private and public schools is the attitude of entitlement public schools foster.  Private schools require parent participation and therefor more parents and children are connected through and throughout the education process.  Public schools don't "require" anything and very few parents participate.  Of all the public school families I know on a small percentage work for the schools volunteer programs and those are usually in sports.  I call a friend of mine who is a stay at home mom to ask about the volunteering she does for the private school her three children attend.  She averages 20 hours a week as head of the PTG and chair person of one committee, parent partner in the classroom and driver for field trips.  I called another friend who teaches in a middle income area public school and she nearly fell off her chair laughing when I asked how many volunteer hours the school requires.  The answer:  None.  How many volunteer hours are given by the parents of the 30 students in her home room?  None.  The number of hours donated by parents to help with class activities?  None.  They can't even get parents to sign up to chaperon field trips.  When something is handed to you free of charge most people don't have respect for it.

For what it's worth, I do agree with you here.  I think the major problems of our public school system are much bigger than the system itself.  They're cultural, and this is one of them.  If parents won't get involved, they're shooting the system in the foot right off the top.  It's not always a matter of being self-centered or lazy, though; it's not uncommon now for parents to have to work two or more jobs to keep their head above water, so free time comes at a premium.  The idea of a "stay at home parent" is not so ubiquitous as it used to be, and I don't think it's fair to expect someone who works close to, say, 60 hours a week (split between two different companies, that means no overtime pay) to contribute the same amount of time as someone who doesn't work outside the home.  Maybe that's what's needed, but it doesn't seem fair.

[Callie Del Noire]

More parental involvement would cut down on the 'tyrants' I see in school boards and such. I've seen some of the nastiest politics in local arenas.. people turn into petty despots over a small amount of turf..

[Beguile's Mistress]

A single mother with three children in elementary/middle school and a son in high school works at home during the day and six hours at night.  She sits with her children every evening to do home work, go over the day's lessons and read with them  At night a neighbor comes over to sleep in her apartment while she works.  She pays her $120 a week.  She works a total of 75 hours a week, gets no paid health care or sick leave or vacation and still manages to send her kids to a parochial school because they would now be in three different schools with no chance of honors programs because there are none available and the one child with a learning disability attested to by their doctor was denied special education because he doesn't qualify.  The lowest grade one of her children got in the last three years, including the learning disabled child, was a B+.  She has no social life and no chance for one but she has four children she loves and they come first.  AND she manages to volunteer in the classroom and works a bingo night twice a month.

If she can do it why can't others?  Some have the advantages of two parents and only one or two children and they can't do it.  Maybe a few have a good reason but not all of them.  When you make the choice to have children everything else in life becomes second until you have your children taken care of.  You aren't a parent if you are spending $30 on a carton of cigarets each week and feeding your children peanut butter and jelly sandwiches so you can afford the cigarets or beer or nights out or fancy clothes or movies or video games or any of the other things you don't need.  And don't get me started on drugs.  The house where children live should be a drug free zone.  ALL drugs including marijuana should be over and done with.

Not all cases are the same, I know, and I feel for the ones who ant to be there for their children and their only choice to do that is to go on public assistance.  But before someone tells me they can't do for their children they better have a damn good reason.

[Callie Del Noire]

I know what you mean.. some folks can do it.. some don't.. it's not so much a TIME issue.. as a Self-displine and investment issue. My sister-in-law and brother are UBER busy professionals who managed to at least spend time with their kids every night.. I'm proud of them.. not that he's a millionaire and a success.. but because he did the same thing my mom and dad did.. invest in the kids.